“It’s hard to describe how remarkably true to the film it is,” [FX Networks CEO John Landgraf] said, noting that when he sent Hawley’s script to the film’s writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen, the brothers replied “we don’t know how to give notes, can we rewrite it?” But then just sent back “half dozen pages with a few dialogue suggestions.”

“I think people are going to be entranced with that show,” Landgraf said. “[Hawley's] managed to [create] a new version of Fargo that’s its own thing.”

Thornton stars as Lorne Malvo, "a rootless, manipulative man who meets a small town insurance salesman and sets him on a path of destruction."

It's his first TV role. Quick, what's the last good thing Billy Bob's appeared in?